Full impact of Obamacare still unknown

Steve Alaniz, For the Express-News

Updated 5:05 pm, Friday, January 10, 2014

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past three or so years, health care reform is a subject that you have heard about from numerous sources, each of whom has his own distinct opinion. Depending on the source of your information, you have likely heard the terms Affordable Care Act, ACA and Obamacare.

What impact has the Affordable Care Act had on the vast majority of the country? As a health care provider, an employee, and as the CEO of a Physical Therapy company, I have been exposed to all three sides of this puzzle. Three sides? Yes, there are three sides. The three sides of the puzzle are: 1) the consumer of health care, 2) the provider of health insurance (usually the employer) and 3) the health care provider.

As a health care provider, little is known about how the ACA will be affecting our health care industry. What the health care industry is aware of are the recent trends from government-funded programs such as Medicare.

The recent trends from Medicare have been reduction in payments for the health care services we provide. This is combined with the trend that more paperwork has to be done to get reimbursed for the services provided.

The overwhelming feeling from leaders in the health care industry is that the ACA will continue the same trends of reductions in reimbursements and more labor intensive practices will be required to get paid for the services provided. What is the truth? We won't know until we begin to see what our reimbursements do with the newly insured patients we see in 2014 and beyond.

As an employer who provides health insurance to our employees, the ACA has had a clear impact. Each year, our company requests bids for our health care insurance to get the best coverage for the lowest cost. This year, despite the fact our group used only 30 cents of health care for every dollar we spent on premiums, the best bid we got back was an 11 percent increase in premiums for similar coverage. Four percent of that increase was a fixed increase, mandated by the ACA, which applies to all employers providing health insurance to their employees. Most companies typically pass any increases in cost straight to their employees. Given that most people who are insured in this country by an employer-provided health insurance plan, the ACA more than likely resulted in making health care a little more expensive for most of our country. According to the Thomas J. Kaiser Foundation, 48 percent of the total population in the U.S. has health insurance through their employer. The next highest group was insured through Medicaid, which was 16 percent of the total population.

My last perspective is as the consumer of health care. I am an employee who gets health insurance benefits from my employer.

The benefits offered by my employer in 2014 were very similar to my options in 2013. I was told that our company was not allowed to offer the same plan and the cost of the new plans was slightly higher than 2013.

The fact that the ACA will provide insurance to millions (estimated at about 10 percent of our total population) of previously uninsured Americans is a great thing.

What is the impact for the rest of the population? This is the $750 billion question we all have to answer.

The impact on health care providers will not be known until we see what happens in 2014 and beyond.